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Posts tagged ‘graffiti’

Jan 28

City as Canvas: Graffiti Exhibit at IMA

The City as Canvas exhibition first went up at the Museum of the City of New York in 2014.  A large portion of the exhibit is of work that Martin Wong collected in the late 1980s and 1990s while living in New York, including graffiti artists’ black books of sketches and a series of photographs from subway trains around the city (more on the backstory including how Wong built his collection by paying graffiti artists for their work can be is here).

I am glad that this exhibition was in Indianapolis.  Today is its last day at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.  I have to say that first before I pronounce on how it produces the sense of New York and graffitied New York as a strange and foreign culture where the natives did things like (gasp) spray paint on public property.  They even had a display of graffiti vocabulary to drive home the “look at the strange natives” vibe.  Growing up in Philadelphia in the 80s and the 90s, I find graffitied cities to be the backdrop of city life. I remember starting to recognize tags and seeing how much certain artists got around town, and thinking, it was like a secret code, because it was. Read more

Jun 3

Greek Graffiti: But hey, isn’t all writing illicit?

Yesterday we took the bus down to Nafplion on the peninsula that juts out from the northeast coast of the Peloponnese.  It’s a gorgeous town that still retains its 19th century Italianate charm, as our host in absentia, told us.  The place is rustic and again, to quote, “close to nature.”  But I spend a lot of time thinking about nature so I’m pleased to be close to it.

I’ve been writing some fairly heady posts, so I’m taking this break to share some pictures of graffiti that I took in Athens and a couple here in Nafplio.  What?  No, long diatribe about how all writing is illicit and therefore of the structure of graffiti?  That was just a teaser.  You’ll have to fill out that argument on your own. Read more